How we setup our live stream – Behind the Scenes
Ever wonder how we use virtual and real studio sets during our weekly live streams on YouTube? Well you asked during our last live stream and we zoomed out to demonstrate our set up. We have retrofitted our conference room space into a live streaming and broadcast space with a pull-down green screen, vinyl blue brick backdrop and multiple displays for live streaming and broadcasting.
More on Corporate Live Streaming
Using a Crestron Control System for complete system control here.
Wirecast Live Show Transcript
Paul Richards: Okay, and we are back. There is about 3 minutes till our live giveaway, I’m going to keep that up there so that you guys can see.
Andrew Haley: I have a question when you’re ready to take questions.
Paul Richards: Yeah, hit me with the question.
Andrew Haley: So who does your voice overs? Because those are great.
Paul Richards: Oh that’s a good question, if you need my voice over guy…
Andrew Haley: No I won’t steal your voice over guy, I just really want to know.
Using Voiceovers for live streaming
Paul Richards: Actually you want a little extra voice over on this? Alright when its 30 seconds left till the giveaway he’s going to do another freaking …it was just an idea that I had, there where people out there that will do voiceovers for next to nothing and it’s so valuable, the one tip I would have for people out there is to make sure you get a commercial license if you are doing anything live and you hire someone to do a voice over, ask them how much it also cost to get the commercial license. If you every want to monetize that piece of content later.
Andrew Haley: Oh you mean like commercial rights to be able to use their voice on content you are monetizing?
Paul Richards: Yes exactly, because technically they are not going to make a custom voice over for you and then have it copywritten, so you are not going to get a copyright strike for using it. But technically if you get something super popular they can be like “Oh you don’t have the rights” so you just get it upfront before you use it and you’re good to go. Tess how is the chat room looking?
Questions from the YouTube Live Chatroom
Tess Protesto: the chat is blowing up, you got so many question. First off people are really excited about your scheduling teacher everybody is talking about that. Here is a question for you from Michael Burdis “is there a way to remote control wire-cast other than team viewer?”
Remote Controlling Wirecast

Remote Controlling Wirecast
Andrew Haley: yeah, there absolutely is, so wire-cast has what is called a scripting API library that is installed when you download the program. It’s basically if you are on windows you can go into your resources folder and then wire-cast folder and check out examples, it’s basically a list of, it’s like a menu of things you can tell wire-cast to do if you use a scripting language or call and that’s basically you can tell it to switch shots, you can tell it to start the streaming, stop streaming and things like that. You just need to know some basic programming or to know someone who does know and they can build a little app for you that will tell wire-cast what to do remotely and we have people doing that all over the place. On apple it’s a little different it’s apple scripts and those are pretty simple and straight forward to use but the list of commands you can tell wire-cast to do is in the apple script library so either one of those is a great way to tell wire-cast exactly what you want to do from a remote destination or from another computer.
Tess Protesto: “Will NDI support be added anytime soon?” James Davis
Wirecast NewTek NDI Support

Wirecast Newtek NDI Support
Andrew Haley: Yes, very, very soon and if you want a little work around right now you just upgrade your new-blue, new blue comes free, it’s a graphics and titling program that we bundle with wirecast and you can download it from www.newbluefx.com and you get a free basic version that comes with 60 templates that make your animated graphics. I highly recommend you do that especially if you pair that with the virtual set that Paul you are giving away? Those are amazing. Then you add virtual graphics and animated graphics. Looks awesome you basically are at professional level right there. If you upgrade from that free 99, its $99 if you were to buy it but it’s free if you have wire-cast 7 or above. If you upgrade a next version I think its titler live standard and that’s like $200 maybe that would give you NDI, actually I’m wrong on that. If you go to the middle version….
And now it’s time to announce this week’s live technology winner, as noted in the contestant rules, all winners must be present in the chat room to claim the price or a new winner will be drawn. Drum roll please.
Paul Richards: We are going to draw 10 winners, now keep in mind the top one gets the wirecast gear, but you got to be in the chatroom. Tess is going to be monitoring the chat room.
Tess Protesto: I’m here.
Paul Richards: What is this guy’s name? John Mazurek, oh he’s a regular, I’ve seen him at the show before. It’s John Ma…. And Chad Le’Farge is number 2 so it’s either John Mazurek. Now we are going to give John 3, 4, 5 ….
Andrew Haley: I think it M-A-Z-U-R-E-K
Paul Richards: And sorry for cutting you off there Andrew I think the intensity was building in the chat room
Andrew Haley: It’s so intense I was noticing.
Paul Richards: So we’re just waiting for and there is a little latency with YouTube so we’re going to give John a full 2 minutes or so.
Tess Protesto: So John-John who is commenting in the chat room is saying that this is John Mazurek.
Paul Richards: Oh, so he’s here. Alright John, congratulation you win. I swear John won last time. John won something last time too didn’t he?
Tess Protesto: Yeah, super lucky he’s got some kind of hacker trick up his sleeves
Paul Richards: Alright, John you win. Chad La’Farge you get a free virtual set. Phillip Wozniak, I’m not going to butcher this name, Matt Moore, you are all going to get an email from me. Denny Ham, Anthony Vilinum and Benjamin Lindsay. You guys all win. Congratulations I’m so happy that we’ve got three big winners here.
Tess Protesto: People aren’t too happy with John for winning
Paul Richards: He won something else before, this guy always win
Andrew Haley: Loyalty is rewarded I guess.
Paul Richards: I guess he probably commented on every single video
Tess Protesto: Lot of people won sets though and they are pretty fun, that’s part of how we do what we do. A lot of people are asking you a lot of as well Paul about how we do some of the things we do.
Building a live video background

Behind the scenes ptzoptics show
Paul Richards: yeah, you know what I wanted to do Tess is I wanted to start, take the camera and in on the set and then zoom out and show how we built our set. This is the set Tess, you want to just show them kind of what we built here.
Tess Protesto: Yes, so this is our physical set. It’s a vinyl sticker, it’s a blue brick print we just went on Pinterest and found some ideas we like and some floating shelves and just some ancient piece that we felt matched well without theme and Paul, just right next to me is in front of a green screen
Paul Richards: Tada…
Andrew Haley: I wasn’t even sure if you guys where in the same room, that’s so cool.
Paul Richards: Yeah, a lot of people don’t realize that we are actually right here and then Andrew is right there. Can you see Andrew on the screen there?
Tess Protesto: Hi
Virtual Set vs Real Set
Paul Richards: You can’t see because there is a glare. I have the camera shooting at me for my green screen effect so I can be in the virtual set then we’ve got a second camera on Tess over here so that we can pull her in and this is where we’re really making most of our videos, it’s actually right here because when you’ve got a real set it’s just so easy to light, you don’t have to worry about a chrome-key, we can put whatever we want, we even have books back there on audio visuals stuff.
Tess Protesto: The light that I didn’t turn it off, I just moved it up, someone was asking about it. This is just studio light, it produces heat in case we are wondering about getting it. If you want to purchase one.
Andrew Haley: Your lighting is at the same angle as the practical, like that practical that you have right there, the little propped light which looks really cool, makes it look…
Tess Protesto: yeah, I’ve got a key light behind me on the floor. Someone is saying “the vinyl had me fooled” I know. It does look really dimensional. We’re really happy with it and we did this whole physical set in around $500 and you can certainly do it for cheaper, the most expensive part was the desk we choose. It would be more like $300 if we didn’t do that
Paul Richards: yeah this desk is really cool. This is technically like a service desk that people buy for the front of an auto mechanic or something and there is like drawers and stuff where we can put our cameras because you know when you start doing this stuff there is an unlimited amount of things that you need and so we can stay a little organized and here I am right here, I got headphones, so me and Tess actually have a headphone splitter so we take the audio from Andrew and we both have it in our ears so we can both hear Andrew. You can do it wirelessly but ours was a heck of a lot cheaper and easier and yeah that’s it. So we wanted to just zoom out and just show that.
Andrew Haley: We totally should do a set. Your studio looks so much cleaner than ours here. I did a behind the scenes tour recently on our studio and it sucked….
Tess Protesto: Literally everything is hiding behind this desk if I could take a camera behind it you would see the truth.
Andrew Haley: I was looking at Paul’s desk it looked like empty and there were like a couple of devices I was like gosh, if I could show you my desk right now, it’s just exploding.
Tess Protesto: Well this is actually our conferencing room as well so it can of forces us to keep it organized
Paul Richards: Yeah, they force us to clean it all the time and not only that but I think a lot of our customers in the corporate world, I think Andrew you have a lot of customers in the corporate world. A lot of them are taking conferencing spaces and saying “Hey we want to live broadcast every once in a while” where they are doing webinars, but they want to take it up a whole another level and this is a perfect example of where we just took a meeting space and just said “Hey can we have like 8ft over there and wallpaper it with blue brick and put some lights and some shelves and there you go.
Andrew Haley: So good, and those are the rooms that aren’t being used all the time anyway they are the perfect places to start converting into studio type of situations.
Paul Richards: A lot of times they already have a conference camera in there, they already have a computer we are just talking about maybe adding a headset and maybe wire-cast and enabling a room to be …a lot of them are even doing webinars but they don’t have lower thirds, they don’t have the ability to have 3 or 4 people included and that’s what you really want if you’re going to be going to thousands of people on Facebook and YouTube and all of this things in fact Andrew I don’t know if you’ve read the same articles I did but the live streaming industry is supposed to be $70billion by 2020.
Andrew Haley: Seriously? You got to send me that article.
Paul Richards: …and it’s only like 45 right now, so it’s almost going to be double in like 3 years and it’s like everybody in the live streaming business is growing, everyone I talk to but not just that but the people that are using it, it’s so beneficial for them, it’s really fun, interesting.
Andrew Haley: Actually I’m curious how’s John Mazurek going to use the wirecast gear? So John if you are still there what are you going to use it for?
Paul Richards: Yeah, John, John we will get in touch with you and send it to you. Actually John to be completely honest I was hoping to have you on the show like in a couple of month, maybe after NAB, once you’ve had a chance to use it and plug it all in, just come on the show, maybe use it in a church, what’s your deal John?
Tess Protesto: We got all those comments now we want to know what your use is.
Paul Richards: I’m going to look for John, John on YouTube. But yeah it’s been fun and Andrew your show has been an inspiration for me, I don’t know how you get all those great names, is it because you are from California?
Andrew Haley: That must be it. It’s California. One in ten Americans want to live in California.
Paul Richards: because you’re in the same time-zone you guys are all on the coast there.
Andrew Haley: You know, honestly I think we’ve really been lucky because wirecast is just a really well-known name and we continue to let it be known and so we’re always pleasantly surprised when we find someone new who is using it that is somebody we’ve heard about and we want or are inspired by so we want to bring them on and talk to them and see how they are using It and then of course there is always as you know there is the interview that you don’t expect to be really great and then they turn out to be the best interviews and it’s not because you were like “Oh this is the biggest person I could possibly get” it’s just they seem interesting then you come on and they blow you away so I’ve heard a lot of those interviews to so I really like doing this, this has been a lot of fun and I think that we as a group of media live streamers we should constantly watching each other’s shows and pulling inspiration
Tess Protesto: We totally believe that, yeah
Andrew Haley: I think like just being on this show today I’m like “Wow, we could totally do that”
Tess Protesto: we you get ideas, this whole thing, I’m obsessed with life streaming pro’s was my ideas was inspired by their set which I love so much
Andrew Haley: We really wanted to do physical set too and just watching how simple you guys have done it there and talking about it, I’m like “Okay, we got to make this happen, that’s so cool”
Using Scoreboards with Wirecast

Using Scoreboards with Wirecast
Tess Protesto: Andrew got a quick question for you, someone’s asking if there is any chance that they will be more score board designs for sports with wire-cast.
Andrew Haley: yeah, so you know what going to be interesting is when we get NDI directly into wire-cast because Photoshop, adobe, all that stuff’s already NDI compactible so you can design your score boards in Photoshop, like almost in real time and then broadcast them right into wire-cast. So if there is anything you want to change you just move to your Photoshop file, you don’t have to export it, you don’t have to do anything it’s just boom out and broadcasting, so I think that’s going to be the best way I don’t think you should every rely on the software manufacturers to be your designers for you we’ll always include some basics just to get you some nuts and bolts once that you can use those do a little bit of an overhaul so hopefully we’ll get to that at some point cause they’ve been around there for a couple of versions now but yeah, I think your best option is to jump into Photoshop and become your own designers because you’re going to know what your scoreboard what you want it to look like another great way is the new blue option, you can completely customize your score boards right in there and they will allow you to plug in variable values so you can have clocks, you can have those, you can change the fonts, you can make them 3D, you can do almost anything you need to and then feed that right live into wire-cast as well so whether you’re a Photoshop expert or you’re a new blue expert, those are two great ways to customize your score boards.
Tess Protesto: So you could kind of do a pre-show timer? If you wanted to because somebody asked about that earlier.
Andrew Haley: That’s one of those things, that’s on our goal list for our show we’ve been so bad about our pre-show timer and we really …that would definitely keep us honest because we want to be doing that too on our show and like Paul you were saying at the beginning of this show “I always forget the pre-show timer”
Paul Richards: Sometimes I’ll just accidentally turn it off or something and then I’m like “People thing that we might be live and really we should be showing the countdown timer.”
Tess Protesto: John-John has answered us he says “I want to help my friend out with his school doing remote productions with their graduations and also working with his students on training and production.” Looks like this is going to be on an educational settings which is good to hear
Paul Richards: Very good to here.
Andrew Haley: Thanks for telling us John-John that’s awesome, if you have any questions about the gear, let us know we’re happy to help.
Free Virtual Sets for Wirecast
Paul Richards: that’s great, I’m so happy, so someone from a school. That means there is a really good use case there, a lot of younger people probably getting involved into wire-casting. I wanted to scroll here really quick, so here is our give away, it’s over but if you go to www.ptzoptics.com/landing that actually is a secret to get to all of our different landing pages but one of them says wire-cast. There!!! Free Virtual sets for wire-cast, so you can go there and everybody watching can download free version set for wire-cast. It’s www.ptzoptics.com/landing/wirecast.html .
Andrew Haley: I will share that out as well, I haven’t shared that out on my show yet you were saying that we’re happy to share that out right?
Tips for Royalty Free Video Production Assets
Paul Richards: Yeah, so there is some church ones, there is some educational ones, it’s not the complete set that we offered that’s $100 which 9 people won today but it’s a pretty nice little package and you know wire-cast comes with a bunch but if you need a couple of extra, the way we made those because we are getting this questions about Photoshop is there is a website called Photo dune, Videoblocks, Themeforest, Code Cannon, you can download pre-done Photoshop templates that all I do, I never spend hours and hours creating Photoshop stuff, I just go online, look for somebody who has already created a really nice one, buy it for like $10 and then just customize it. so if you’re not a Photoshop pro, I would highly recommend just learn the basics because if you can just click and just …that’s what Tess does she goes in, finds like a template that’s like $10 that does exactly what we want and then you just pop your logo in, change the text, change the things and then once you’ve gotten that far, sometimes you’ve got to customize it a little further just to make it fit into wire-cast perfectly, whether it’s bringing in a PNG file so that it’s transparent over your background or some other different things but I would highly recommend learning those basics because wire-cast isn’t going to do it for you, we’re not going to do it for you, there are certain things you just have to do yourself to really get up to the television level.
Andrew Haley: I would love to see you do a tutorial on that or to come on our show and talk about how you do that, that’s pretty cool.
Paul Richards: Yeah, because I’ve got tons of examples like all of the virtual sets are example of that, I’d love to do it, just let me know. I was on the show ones before and I think when I did it from my home. The thing about your stream Andrew it that it’s like 5:36 Eastern
Andrew Haley: it’s 5:30
Paul Richards: yeah, it’s 5:30 Eastern so for me that’s actually good in a lot of ways because I think a lot of people are off work and they can tune in.
Tess Protesto: that’s when you are feeding William.
Paul Richards: But that’s when I’m feeding little baby and I got another baby on the way so I can necessarily…
Andrew Haley: Congratulation
Paul Richards: Thank you, and Andrew you have a couple of kids too don’t you?
Andrew Haley: Yeah I have three kids, I’ve got a 9 year old, 4 year old and 2 year old she just turned 2 last week. I think we’re done here but they definitely easily outnumber us
Tess Protesto: They are a handful huh?
Andrew Haley: Yeah, they are. But you see this dark circles. You guys know then, it’s fun, can’t live with them, can’t leave without them.
Paul Richards: so here we are talking about our kids we had a great live show, we made John-John extremely happy, we had ton and tons of fun, I think that really raps it up. We had 141 viewers.
Tess Protesto: This is my favorite show yet I think
Paul Richards: which we’ve never had that many viewers before.
Andrew Haley: Great time, Great time. And I was going to say John-John we’re really …you guys were saying we’re so happy it went to a school, you’re going to be using it in an educational settings the last thing we want is like the winner to be like “Oh yeah, I’m going to put my wire-cast gear on top of my other two wirecast gears” Glad you’re using that, let us know if there is anything we can do to help you. The rest of you if you have a question on virtual sets or whatever to help us get into wire-cast Paul will be a great expert to help you with that but we can definitely help you over here as well. Paul we should definitely have you on to talk more about virtual sets and stuff that’s a really cool topic.
Paul Richards: I’d be happy to be on. No promise I can’t get clearance from my wife because it’s 5:30 but if we can bump the time up an hour, I’m just kidding.
Andrew Haley: Yeah, Just get a written permission from John-John.
Tess Protesto: People are asking to announce the winners again, I don’t know how we will pull that up again
Paul Richards: We can pull it up again.
Tess Protesto: They want to see who the winners of the virtual sets are and I did include that landing page where anybody could click that link and download those wire-cast virtual set’s which is pretty cool.
Paul Richards: So here is the winners again, anybody can get the basics wire-cast gear virtual sets that we offer to extend the functionality of wire-cast. But we also have here 10 winners of our complete virtual sets that’s 20 Virtual sets and again the commercial rights to use them cause this are some really cool once actually. Chad Lafarge, Phillip Wigan’s, sorry I’m looking on a projector.
Andrew Haley: is there a page they can go to see that? Like a link?
Paul Richards: Yeah, there is actually, I fact I think there is something that says …does that say display all winners there? Announce all winners in widget.
Andrew Haley: It says announce with Avatars, Announce without avatars,
Paul Richards: Okay, so let’s do with avatars. So now the widget …this is a really cool little widget there would never be able to do this without this widget, so now right on www.ptzoptics.com/giveaway it shows all the winner.
Tess Protesto: Okay there you go www.ptzoptics.com/giveaway you can see if you are one of the winners.
Paul Richards: They are probably bugging you in the chat room and not realizing that it’s going to take about a minute and a half for that information to come on.
Tess Protesto: And we’re going to post the whole recorded show so that anything you miss you can catch up with there on YouTube
Paul Richards: Alright, so once again Andrew it was a pleasure. I’d love to come on the show sometime and anything new exciting maybe we have you on from tele-stream instead of wire-cast one of this days because we do have some corporate customers that I think might be more interested in that kind of stuff.
Tess Protesto: A lot of people are asking about the hospital, the surgical aspect we didn’t get the chance to talk about, when you mentioned people streaming surgeries, people are asking to hear more about that. There Is so many question it’s hard to keep up
Andrew Haley: Yeah I know, it’s hard to keep up with it all, but I’d love to …I had a great time thanks for having me on today, I really was happy to be a part of this really exciting that you guys are giving away the gear. It’s amazing to see how much the show has changed since the last time I was on so keep improving it’s looking so good and Tess it was nice to meet you, thank you so much
Tess Protesto: Nice to meet you too
Paul Richards: Alright, thanks Andrew, thanks everybody
Tess Protesto: Thanks Everyone.
And that all folks, we appreciate your participation in the chat room and can’t wait to host our informative Q&A section, your questions drive the conversation forward for live streaming professionals around the world. Until next time, Happy Streaming.
We have an entire course on how we built our video background set that’s free on UDEMY! Check out free live video production and streaming courses below!
✓ Join the Giveaway of the Week – http://ptzoptics.com/giveaway/
✓ Free UDEMY Course on how we live stream here: http://ptzoptics.com/landing/coupons.html
✓ Join the PTZOptics User Group – http://ptzoptics.com/FB/
✓ Watch our Latest Friday Live Stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QItkvlnhQyM&list=PLyY0t7zWqRQoVWffzTC2B7eWwO0DqdCFC
✓ View Upcoming Live Webinars: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa-H8O_q6M6P9XkgLmzxxDw/videos?shelf_id=1&live_view=502&sort=dd&view=2
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